Best AGP graphics card?

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I have four IDE devices (3 HDD, 1 DVD burner).
Would I notice a significant upgrade in performance with the $250-300 upgrade package you were proposing?

This might sound silly, but I've somehow managed to time my upgrades, coincidentally or subconsciously, with the release of Valve games, and considering that the Half-Life series is nearly the only games I play, it's just worked out for me as I never really pushed my systems with other things. With Episode 3 coming out in a year or so, it's like I'm biding my time for a full system upgrade until then because I am pretty sure this system will not satisfy that game's needs.

I do occasionally push my system with something new like Mirror's Edge, Left 4 Dead and Crysis, but I have to run them at their lowest setting. I also got a 24" widescreen monitor last year which ended up being bitter sweet because the native resolution was too high for even Half-Life 2 DM to run smoothly in widescreen mode - I'm having to run that game in fullscreen mode with a lower resolution, giving me a stretched screen, which I hear isn't very good for the monitor either.

Other than that, my only other performance pusher is Photoshop, but I don't believe that program benefits from a graphics card upgrade.
 
It would be a very big difference in basically everything you do. However if you don't feel like you really need the upgrade and your computer is working for you then you can of course wait. However if you upgrade I recommend going with the core parts and not a $200 agp card. A core parts upgrade is a much better value compared to just the video card. Actually if you sale your old mobo, cpu, ram, and gpu you would probably be under $200. But you will need either a different motherboard than I suggested or a adapter since you need 2 ide connectors.
 
Do you mean a PCI to IDE adapter or a SATA to IDE adapter? I've used the PCI IDE cards in the past but never really liked them. Just for comparisons sake could you recommend a motherboard with 2 IDE connectors?

Thanks a lot for the help, btw.
 
The newer chipsets do'nt support ide directly, the only reason you have one port is because they have an ide controller on the motherboard. Early BIOS versions didn't do a good job of using it and compatibility was a major issue. SATA is the way to go now.
 
Having 4 IDE devices does complicate things. A nforce 750i board seems to be the only choice Newegg.com - MSI P7N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards but its $140-$25mir... And personally I would rather have a p43/45 but its not a bad choice but still is a good bit more money.

How big are the hard drives that your using? If their small you could probably just replace 2 of them with one new bigger faster Sata drive. Also hdd's are the most common thing to break so if you have some older ones it might be a good idea to upgrade. Hard drives aren't to much money they start around

320gb ~$50
500gb ~$60
750gb ~$80
 
Yeah thats what I was suggesting. 750i isn't bad but its expensive and unless he wanted sli later isn't really needed. Plus if he did want 2 cards he could just go crossfire instead and get a p45. But you never know, he could have 2x1TB ide drives (I think thats as big as they got) but they probably are smaller drives.
 
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